Quotes from Amy Tan

I was shocked, and I ended up contacting three academics to find out if it could possibly be that my grandmother was a courtesan.

There is this myth, that America is a melting pot, but what happens in assimilation is that we end up deliberately choosing the American things - hot dogs and apple pie - and ignoring the Chinese offerings.

My writing often contains souvenirs of the day - a song I heard, a bird I saw - which I then put into the novel.

In a second-class courtesan house, the courtship was much briefer. It could even be one night; usually it went on a little bit longer. But as the years went by, that period of courtship was shorter and shorter.

I loved fairy tales when I was a kid. Grimm. The grimmer the better. I loved gruesome gothic tales and, in that respect, I liked Bible stories, because to me they were very gothic.

So sad! This is the saddest part when you lose someone you love- that person keeps changing. And later you wonder, Is this the same person I lost?

We all hate moral ambiguity in some sense, and yet it is also absolutely necessary. In writing a story, it is the place where I begin.

In America nobody says you have to keep the circumstances somebody else gives you.

It's both rebellion and conformity that attack you with success.

I would find myself laughing and wondering where these ideas came from. You can call it imagination, I suppose. But I was grateful for wherever they came from.

I didn't fear failure. I expected failure.

If you can't change your fate, change your attitude.

Everyone must dream. We dream to give ourselves hope. To stop dreaming - well, that's like saying you can never change your fate. Isn't that true?

I think I've always been somebody, since the deaths of my father and brother, who was afraid to hope. So, I was more prepared for failure and for rejection than for success.

I was intelligent enough to make up my own mind. I not only had freedom of choice, I had freedom of expression.

I loved fairy tales when I was a kid. Grimm. The grimmer the better. I loved gruesome gothic tales and, in that respect, I liked Bible stories, because to me they were very gothic.

Memory feeds imagination.

We dream to give ourselves hope. To stop dreaming - well, that's like saying you can never change your fate.

If you can't change your fate, change your attitude.

Writing what you wished was the most dangerous form of wishful thinking.

Chance is the first step you take, luck is what comes afterward.

Everyone must dream. We dream to give ourselves hope. To stop dreaming - well, that's like saying you can never change your fate. Isn't that true?

Then you must teach my daughter this same lesson. How to lose your innocence but not your hope. How to laugh forever.

I am like a falling star who has finally found her place next to another in a lovely constellation, where we will sparkle in the heavens forever.